The Witch's Familiar Alit Karp (bio) Translation from the Hebrew Click for larger view View full resolution Photo by Joachim Pressl on Unsplash [End Page 14] Click for larger view View full resolution A few days into a third lockdown, a cat and her human companion have differing views about how to handle an army of slugs attacking the petunias. My cat P., of uncertain parentage, helps me with the gardening. The status of the petunias I purchased at the plant nursery just a few days ago, on the eve of the third lockdown, is rather poor. "They don't have any leaves at all," P. says, as if I haven't noticed that myself. "Who ate them?" we ask one another, without answer. "Listen," I tell her. "Let's lay in ambush tonight and see what's going on." "Ambush is my middle name," P. says, as if I didn't know that she ambushes me in my bed every night by stalking my legs, which she apparently likens to giant mice, so that she can pounce on them. But since there are all sorts of mutually agreed-upon lies between us, and since we try to preserve a status quo that would not be worth upsetting after so many years together on account of a few minor inaccuracies, I keep my mouth shut. In the evening, we sit on the couch watching the news. I'm under the blanket and she's on top of it, but that's only because I'm afraid that if I let her under the covers, she'll bite me at the first opportunity. During a commercial break I tell her, "Don't you remember we planned to stand guard in the garden this evening?" "Ummm …" she responds. "Do 'guard' and 'garden' come from the same root?" (You must understand, my cat P. did not have the benefit of a proper education, and her knowledge of language and her knowledge in general are products of her natural intelligence alone.) "No," I tell her. "They are spelled differently." But I know that the point of her question is really just to distract us from the need to go outside. And yet we go. Just as I'm about to illuminate the plants with the flashlight on my cell phone, P. reminds me that she descends from tigers and is blessed with night vision. "It's the slugs, those thugs," she says. (She has a musical ear and a knack for language, as you've no doubt noticed.) And indeed, an army of slugs had stationed itself on whatever was left of my flowers, while a force of armored snails had already advanced to devour my strawberries. This does not fit in with my plans. Quite a few years ago, my husband and I traveled together with our daughter to Sweden one summer. The friend who hosted us had taken upon herself the responsibility of caring for the garden allotment of another friend who was away from the city on a trip. This garden was part of a large park area located in a central location in Stockholm. Yes, that's how it works. In Stockholm you can rent a pea patch to cultivate in the center of the city. Sometimes in the summers you'll see an old lady riding the subway carrying a basket with large zucchini, a bundle of carrots, and other such vegetables. If you've ever encountered an old woman of this sort, you can be certain that for the next two weeks her family will be eating watery vegetable stews from her garden. In any case, this friend of my friend never grew vegetables. Her garden was full of strawberries, only strawberries. I had never seen such strawberries. The bushes they grew on were enormous, and the red, ripe, sweet strawberries poked out everywhere. In the absence of the owner, we watered the garden plot and raided the strawberries. We devoured them until we nearly burst, and our lips turned red as blood. "Mother," asked my daughter—this was her first visit to Sweden since we had left many years ago, "why is it so green here...